AMBIGUITY, FALSE SCENT 273
Simultaneously extensive reclamation of land and harbour improve-
ments are in progress at Chemulpo and Fusanv—Times.
With no comma after the first word, the sleepy reader is set
wondering what simultaneously extensive means, and whether
it is journalese for equally extensive.
But Anne and I did, for we had played there all our lives—at least,
all the years we had spent together and the rest do not count in the
story. When Anne and I came together we began to live.—CROCKETT.
A comma after together would save us from adding the two
sets of years to each other. In the next piece, on the other
hand, the uncomfortable comma after gold is apparently
meant to warn us quite unnecessarily that here and there
belongs to the verb.
Flecks of straw-coloured gold, here and there lay upon it, where the
sunshine touched the bent of last year.—CROCKETT,
After that, having once fallen off from their course, they at length
succeeded in crossing the Aegean, and beating up in the teeth of the
Etesian winds, only yesterday, seventy days out from Egypt, put in at
the Piraeus.—-s. T. IHWIN,
The omission of the comma between and and beating would
ordinarily be quite legitimate. Here, it puts us off on a false
scent, because it allows beating to seem parallel with crossing
and object to succeeded in; we have to go back again when we
get to the end, and work it out.
The French demurring to the conditions which the English com-
mantkr offered, again commenced the action,-—B.
The want of a comma between French and demitrring makes
us assume an absolute construction and expect another subject,
of which we are disappointed*
The next two pairs of examples illustrate the effect of mere
accidental position on stopping. This is one of the number-
less small disturbing elements that make cast-iron rules
impossible in punctuation*
I must leave you to discover what the answer is.
What the answer is, I must leave you to discover*
3766-